


My Backwards Walk

by wyntre



Series: Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Gen, Hurt Crowley, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 21:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyntre/pseuds/wyntre
Summary: Alpha Centauri.Please I love you.Please.NO!Unforgiven. Unforgivable. That's what I am.





	My Backwards Walk

**Author's Note:**

> "I'm working on my faults and cracks  
Filling in the blanks and gaps  
And when I write them out they don't make sense  
I need you to pencil in the rest" - My Backwards Walk, Frightened Rabbit

Crowley grunted as he threw back the last of the whiskey in his glass and gestured to the bartender to pour him another drink.  
"Leave the bottle," he growled, borderline intimidating. The bartender backed up slowly and placed the bottle on the table, before heading back to the bar and adding it silently to Crowley's tab - which had grown exponentially as the afternoon had worn on. The bar was dingy; the kind of place where you go to get drunk and people don't ask you stupid questions and the jukebox played AC/DC on repeat and the single pool table was beginning to look like someone had taken a bat to it in a fit of rage.   
_Stupid, _he berated himself as he poured another three fingers of whiskey and downed it like a shot. _ Why the fuck would he love you, you're a demon. _

Three sheets to the wind, and Crowley had started ruminating on the fight he'd had with Aziraphale in the bandstand. 

_ Run away together. _

_ Alpha Centauri. _

Please I love you.

_ Please. _

_ NO! _

_ Unforgiven. Unforgivable. That's what I am. _

Crowley lifted his omnipresent sunglasses to swipe the tears away. _ Please I love you _ .  
I love you. It had underlined every conversation he had ever had with Aziraphale, every offer of dinner and nights spent drinking that turned into morning light in an attempt to simply spend time with his angel. The days they wasted languishing in the brief summer sunlight in St James’ Park, the way Crowley would snap his fingers and make anything Aziraphale wanted appear, and all the angel ever had to do was look at him.  
“I only ever loved him.” Crowley surprised himself by saying it out loud. It was admitting to something he had tried so hard to bury underneath layers of affected nonchalance. He poured the rest of the whiskey into his glass, swirling it contemplatively before swallowing it without so much as a wince. 

He was too drunk to drive, he knew that. But he didn’t care. Not anymore. He sloppily fished the keys from his pocket and left a hundred pound note on the bar as he stumbled out to his beloved Bentley. Somehow, between sheer demonic intervention and the fact that the roads were empty at two o’clock in the morning, managed to make it to Aziraphale’s bookshop, where; behind the drawn blinds, a light was still on and Crowley could almost see the angel leafing through a well-worn copy of _ Lady Chatterley’s Lover _ or _ The Sonnets and a Lover’s Complaint, _a cup of cocoa - long forgotten and cold, sitting on the tiny table by the old sofa. Crowley sighed glumly before pulling out from the kerb and heading back to his flat. 

It was cold, lonely and sparse. In his drunken haze he discarded his sunglasses, collapsed onto the high-backed chair and stared gloomily at the floor. 

_ I love you. _

That’s all he’d ever wanted to say. Everything he couldn’t say and shouldn’t say. Everything that would have torn their world asunder and broken what fragility six thousand years had manifested in an anxious angel still clinging desperately to the ideal of Heaven and a demon who wasn’t very good at being evil.   
“Damn it.” Crowley wiped away hot tears again. Deciding that curling up in bed was better than the alternative, which was drinking until dawn and then drinking some more, he slumped towards the bedroom. He lay awake for a long time before a fretful sleep overcame him and he dipped below the waves into nightmares; where Aziraphale was Heaven’s righteous angel wreaking vengeance upon the Fallen, and Crowley was faced with a thousand eyes and a blaze of light as he was smote against the rocks by the hand of the being he loved. 

* * *

He woke suddenly, a knock on the door pulling him from trembling dreams. He shook his head and sobered up before stumbling to the front door, and peering through the peephole. It was Aziraphale.  
“Crowley? Crowley, my dear boy? Can we speak?” Aziraphale’s voice was muffled by the thick oak door and Crowley just wished he would leave.

He didn’t need this right now. But he could never deny his angel anything. So he opened up and let him in but Aziraphale stood in the doorway, wringing his hands.  
“Are you a vampire? Do I need to invite you across the threshold?” Crowley was unintentionally gruff and Aziraphale visibly flinched. “Come in.”  
  
Once the door was closed, Crowley found himself crowded against it by a very earnest looking angel.  
“Aziraphale, what are you doing here?”  
Aziraphale searched him, all concern and bright eyes, the colour of the sky as storm clouds rolled away. “I hurt you.”  
Crowley chewed his lower lip, saying nothing; it was easier than admitting to what he really understood about himself.  
“You’ve been drinking, I can smell it on you. I really hurt you.” The angel placed a plump hand on Crowley’s forearm and the demon found himself rooted to the spot. “I never wanted to hurt you.” Crowley wanted to look anywhere but those wide, bright eyes; but he couldn’t, he trembled a little and felt hot tears well and threaten to spill over.  
“I was frightened.” That was more admittance from Aziraphale than Crowley was expecting and it took him by surprise.  
“It’s like you to try and rectify things, but I don’t want to talk about it.”  
“I know Crowley. I _ know _ .” Aziraphale’s hand tightened around Crowley’s thin wrist. “I’m not an idiot.”  
Crowley visibly gulped. “You know _ what _ exactly?”  
“I know how you feel. I always have, since Eden.”  
“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“Crowley-”  
The demon interrupted him. “Aziraphale, I need you to leave. I can’t deal with this right now.”  
“You’re being evasive.”  
“And you’re being _ invasive _ . Please, just stop. Go home. Go back to your books. We can go back to normal, we can go to the Ritz like we always do and we can forget that any of this happened.”  
Aziraphale took a step towards Crowley, and the demon had nowhere to go but further against the door. “I’m not leaving.”  
“Why not? It hasn’t stopped you in the past.”   
“I’m not good at this, Crowley.”  
“I can see that-” but the rest of the sentence was cut off by Aziraphale’s soft lips on his own, and he couldn’t respond before the angel pulled back.  
“I’m not good at _ this _, but please, let me try.” Aziraphale’s voice was quiet. “Let me fill in the gaps.”

And Crowley did.


End file.
